Kadima Women's Torah Project

By Wendy Graff

Making Jewish and feminist history
while achieving a sort of personal
enlightenment may not be the Trifecta,
but creating the first Torah known to be scribed by
women has surely been a remarkable ride. I have
long searched for egalitarian ways to experience
my Jewish spiritual and cultural heritage. When
my Kadima community, one of Reconstructionism’s
newest affiliates (in Seattle, Washington),
broke out of the gate to challenge some 3,000
years of tradition, I leapt eagerly into the saddle.
The possibility of jumping over this epic barrier to
gender equity was simply irresistible.

Kadima had been raising money to buy a Sefer
Torah of its own for years. Used Torahs in good
repair can be purchased for around $15,000, although
even that modest goal seemed perennially
out of our reach. Scrolls that aren’t kosher because
they are worn, unreadable in parts, or otherwise
not repairable cost less, but using a non-kosher
Torah isn’t really . . . kosher. New scrolls can cost
$35,000 and up, depending on the skill and reputation
of the ritual scribe.

In 2000, with the synthesis of Torah-borrowing
fatigue and inspiration, Kadima’s Judaic Director,
Rabbi D'rorah O'Donnell Setel, suggested that we
commission the first Torah ever to be scribed by a
woman. Several of us jumped at the idea, until we
discovered that the reason there haven’t been any
woman-scribed Torahs is because there haven’t
been any women Torah scribes.

It was disconcerting to comprehend fully that
the Torah, feminine in gender in the Hebrew
language — the “tree of life to those who hold
fast to her” — had never, to our knowledge, been
scribed by a woman. Read from every week in
Jewish communities around the world, considered
the most sacred Jewish object, handed down from
generation to generation in one of the world’s
iconic coming-of-age ceremonies, the Torah is
brought to life, copied letter by letter and word by
word, only by men.

I found myself chairing the Women's Torah
Project (WTP) committee and steering a small
cadre through raising money, drafting contracts,
reviewing customs law, researching foundations,
writing grants, converting U.S. currency into
shekels and Canadian funds, reaching out to the
larger Jewish community, finding climate-controlled
storage units, smoothing the waters within
our own group, penning letters and updates and
thank-you notes — the unending minutia and
substance that are the stuff of any major undertaking.

We knew we were partners
in creating something extraordinary
and historic, but did not
expect that our work would a
grow into a life-changing and
bridge-building endeavor. It
began to dawn on us that this
project could become a catalyst
for astonishing and consequential
change, a symbol of opportunity
for women to move
into all areas of Jewish life. It
could bring together progressive
Jews around the world. It
could be a bridge between art
and politics, spirit and culture,
artifact and symbol.

Artists began approaching us, eager to bring
hiddur mitzvah (beautification of the commandment)
to this first Women’s Torah. Embellishing
the Torah hadn’t even been on our radar screen at
first. We were — and still are — far more concerned
with raising the money needed to pay our
scribes. But it was as if pieces of a grander picture
were falling into place. Laurel Robinson, professor
of art at Georgia Southwestern State University,
was the first, contacting us in the Fall of ’03 with
her offer to make a yad and a matching case. We
were thrilled by her gesture and astounded by the
beauty of her work. Laurel’s Purim Kit is in the
collection of the Jewish Museum in New York City,
and her pieces have been exhibited around the
country and around the world. In addition, Laurel
is the private painting instructor for former President
Jimmy Carter — a connection that gladdened
our hearts.

Laurel finished the yad and case in the Spring
of 2005. The yad is 13 inches long and crafted of
pink ivory wood, ebony (from piano keys), deer
antler, and carnelian. It rests comfortably in hands
both small and large. The Song of Songs inspired the
winged rose design because, as Laurel wrote to us,
“Those verses were, perhaps, written by a woman,
and are at least a very ancient example of love poetry.
Even when seen allegorically, those writings
represent the love between the people Israel and
G-d.” This exquisite yad nestles in a graceful box
wrought of domestic cherry, lined with velvet from
the Torah mantle, and inscribed with this blessing
by permission of the poet and liturgist Marcia Falk:
“Let us restore the Shekhinah to her place in Israel
and throughout the world, and let us infuse all
places with her presence.”

Kadima recruited one of its own, multi-talented
artist, Sooze Bloom deLeon Grossman, to design
and create the Torah’s mantle. Sooze chose a
pomegranate as the central motif, stating, “For me,
pomegranates are the most voluptuous of fruits.
Round and heavy, filled with hundreds of tangy
ruby drupelets that burst between your teeth and
saturate your soul, topped with a gorgeous cut
crown, smooth and supple in your hand — pomegranates
are the perfect symbol of the feminine, of
Eitz Hayyim: the Tree of Life, and of our New Torah
scribed, for the first time, by a soferet, or female
Torah scribe. Pomegranates remind us of fertility,
of life, of our role as co-creators with G-d in the
ongoing work of our World, and so it is a pomegranate
that will adorn our first Torah mantle.”

Sooze immediately came up with a way to build
community and connection with her artwork. As
she wrote, “Each seed will be formed from fabric
worn by the generations of women who have
made this Torah possible. We are collecting the
fabric bits (as little as an inch by an inch) and their
history from donors, who in turn collect the fabric
from their mothers, grandmothers, daughters: all
the inheritors of our Matriarchs. Each seed, each
woman, each generation, each story of struggle,
strength, perseverance, joy, and generosity, will be
a visible reminder of our legacy. All of this information
will be lovingly collected and organized
into a provenance for the Torah mantle, which
will be kept as an archived history for the larger
community.”

Not surprisingly, the opportunity to be magnificently
connected to this first Women’s Torah
struck a chord with our supporters. They donated
money and cloth in honor of daughters who found
paths between secular and religiously observant
parents; in memory of mothers who had volunteered
at synagogues for years yet had never been
allowed to read Torah; in the name of babies who
would grow up knowing that women could be
cantors, rabbis and Torah scribes.

Artist Aimee Golant
(www.aimeegolant.com) was recruited to fashion the Torah’s
crowns. Aimee, a grandchild of Holocaust survivors,
started making mezuzot cases in 1993, using
her grandfather’s hand tools. Today, she makes
Judaica almost exclusively. As she explains, “I use
my Judaica to teach people of all faiths how we
Jews see God — as being everywhere and a part
of everything, that there is a vast oneness here on
earth and that we are all interconnected. I want to
create a peaceful world through the making of Judaica.
Once I began this spiritual path, why would
I want to make anything else?”

The last artist to join the fold was Austin-based
silversmith and jewelry designer Andrea Sher-
Leff, who will make the wimple clasp. In March of
2005, Andrea e-mailed us: “I was bat mitzvah at
a traditional synagogue in Skokie, Illinois where
I was not allowed to touch the Torah because I
was female. I began to fight the patriarchy of my
religion as a teenager because I didn't believe
that I shouldn't be able to do things just because
I was female. It has been a long journey, a journey
full circle. I now live in Austin, Texas with
my husband and two children. Three years ago,
dancing at Congregation Beth Shalom for Simchat
Torah, the rabbi turned to me and handed me the
Torah. It was a moment I will always treasure . . .
I should have written this sooner. I hope it's not
too late to participate. I would love to a create fine
silver adornment of any kind. I have to know if
there is any creative part that I can contribute to
this project.”

The Women’s Torah Project, as thrilling as it
is, has not been without tsores. While the Torah
was gaining artistic embellishment, the scribing
itself was static. Kadima
enabled artist and educator Shoshana Gugenheim
(www.artfully.org) to complete her training under
one of the same sofer-mentors who guided another one of our scribes.
Shoshana writes that she engages the arts “as a
means for transformation and cross-cultural communication.”
She has twice served as the artist-in-residence for Elat Chayyim, the Jewish retreat
center in upstate New York. She lives outside of
Jerusalem and has recently begun her scribing of
the Women’s Torah.

Kadima went into this project assuming that
one soferet would complete the Torah. Having
multiple scribes now penning the work feels even
more right for the project than a single soferet.
The Women’s Torah will be physically created
and adorned by a collection of women, supported
every step of the way by other women and men
around the world. It will be born of, and into,
community.

It’s no secret that traditional Judaism, like every
other mainstream religion, is highly patriarchal.
It’s also no secret that thousands of women
and men have worked over the past several
decades to rectify gender inequities and make
language and practice more inclusive. With the
aid of revised liturgical texts, thoughtful service
leaders, and broad cultural change, many of us
have carved out egalitarian ways to see ourselves
and our daughters in Jewish practice. But there
was something about breaking down this last bastion
of discrimination that did more than merely
illuminate a dusty corner of traditional practice.

Perhaps it’s like white sheets. I remember
their antiseptic brilliance, their starched crispness
as they snapped across the bed, or more often,
crumpled around my feet. I never dreamed of
tucking myself into anything else until the day
the J. C. Penney catalog arrived, trumpeting bed
linens in pastel pinks and blues, subtle prints and
stripes. Once I saw the rainbow of possibilities,
plain white just wasn’t enough. Similarly, before
this project, it had never occurred to me to think
about how the Torah scrolls were produced. Once
I understood that no woman had ever transcribed
one, and that I could help that happen for the
first time in history, I couldn’t go back.

The Women’s Torah Project is already about
more than creating a Sefer Torah, although that
would be enough. It is about more than opening
doors for women called to meaningful work that
has been denied to them for millennia because
of their gender, although that, too, would be
enough. It is about transformation, about bringing
people closer to Torah by bringing Torah closer to
them. The Women’s Torah will be a symbol, not
an artifact. It will be another catalyst for transforming
Judaism, and Kadima and its new Reconstructionist
family will be at its heart.

Kadima’s affiliation with the Jewish Reconstructionist
Federation right before Rosh Hashana
this year was sweet synchronicity. A movement in
which creativity is central, in which the construction
of new, personally and communally relevant
observances is encouraged, in which tradition has
“a vote, but not a veto,” is so obviously the right
home for the Women’s Torah Project.